ike Wallace, speaking with his guest Rod Serling during an episode of The Mike Wallace Interview back in 1959, asked a question of the acclaimed television writer that I think would seem preposterous to most of us listening in today from the vantage point of the 21st century. (In addition, the fact that both men can be seen puffing away at cigarettes as they speak seems a bit odd when viewed from this era of smoke-free TV.)
At the time of the interview, Serling was already at the top of his game. He was known as one of the best teleplay writers in what was still a relatively new art form. He had won Emmys with his scripts for "Requiem for a Heavyweight," "Patterns" and "The Comedian" (the only writer at that time to have won three such awards). Yet for the television audience of the day, Serling's classic series The Twilight Zone still lay in the future, along with the additional fame and success it would bring.
About 10 minutes into an interview in which Serling had touched on such topics as his difficult climb to the top of the heap, and the brutal struggle to deal with social issues in an adult manner in the face of sponsor censorship, Wallace tossed out a barbed comment about "a new series coming up called The Twilight Zone." He offered the proposition that by entering the world of science fiction and fantasy:
"In essence, for the time being and for the foreseeable future, you've given up on writing anything important for television."
Serling, bruised and scarred by his TV censorship battles, responded from the perspective of a world-weary writer:
"Somebody asked me the other day if this means that I'm going to be a meek conformist. And my answer is no, I'm just acting the role of a tired non-conformist. I don't want to fight anymore. I don't want to have to battle sponsors and agencies. I don't want to have to push for something that I want and have to settle for second best. I don't want to have to compromise all the time. Which in essence is what the television writer does if he wants to put on controversial themes."
Whether Serling, at the moment he spoke those words, sincerely meant that he was retiring from the arena of social commentary, or whether he was simply sending up a subversive smoke screen which he hoped would give him the peace to work undercover and without interference, we can only guess. One thing we can be sure of, 44 years later, is that The Twilight Zone was not a disengagement from social discourse—instead, it was an advance unlike any other in television history.
The importance of being Serling
I had the opportunity to view this intriguing interview on the massive DVD collection The Twilight Zone: The Gold Edition (MSRP $399.99), where it was one of two extras that gave me a peek at what the world saw prior to the show's premiere (the other glimpse being a promotional trailer done to pitch the upcoming series to potential sponsors).
It was fascinating to see the manifest uncertainty surrounding what today is an obvious television icon. How could anyone—sorry, Mike Wallace—doubt the importance of the enterprise on which Serling was about to embark?
We, luckily, have the evidence that Wallace lacked, for far more important than these two rarities are the 156 episodes themselves, lovingly presented in V3 Media's edition of 45 DVDs (and accompanied by four bonus discs which include biographical information, show history, episode reviews and more).
Skimming through these episodes, collected here in chronological order, I am reminded that I can almost measure out my life by The Twilight Zone. The earliest nightmare (at least, that I can I remember) was brought on thanks to the episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." In grade school, my friends and I used to take turns guessing, after someone shouted out a first scene, the final moments of an episode; I always won. When I wrote scripts for such comic books as House of Mystery and House of Secrets, and stories for the syndicated TV series Tales from the Darkside, they were always in honor of him (and always falling far short of his example). One of my earliest fiction sales, titled "The Fifth Dimension" and published in Twilight Zone magazine, was even about him.
But more important than any of that, he taught me things, important things, regardless of the way Wallace's question implied that the fantastic had no worthwhile message to impart. "Walking Distance" let me know that I should never lose touch with the child within. "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" warned me about the dangers of suspicion. "To Serve Man" reminded me that, regardless of the cliché, I should always look a gift horse in the mouth. Again and again, Serling offered messages as powerful, eternal and, yes, important as those he tried to convey when battling with sponsors over his more "realistic" scripts. I owe him more thanks than I can possibly express.
In the face of those shows and the lessons we all took from them, what can we make of Serling's early evaluation that The Twilight Zone represented a withdrawal from the field of battle? You may choose what motivation you like, but I choose to believe that he was being wily, not weary, and knew that there were things he could get away with saying in science fiction that would cause outrage if framed in a more realistic setting. He was not beaten down into using the metaphors I love—he chose them.
And in making that choice, he made
a contribution to science fiction and to television that was, as he intoned about The Twilight Zone itself in the show's intro, as vast as space, and as timeless as infinity.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science
Fiction Weekly back in 1974, when he began working as an assistant editor at
Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in
the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the
award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, in addition to editing
Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit. Currently, he also edits SCI
FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel. His short stories can be found in the recent anthologies Angel Body and other Magic for the Soul and The Book of More Flesh.
